INTRODUCTION xxvii 



was in ye utmost danger : but God being mercifull to me, 

 I was after a fortnight abroad againe ; when changing my 

 lodging I went over against Pozzo Pinto, where I bought 

 for winter provisions 3000 weight of excellent grapes, and 

 pressed my owne wine, which proved incomparable liquor. ' 

 Its goodness, indeed, seems to have been the death of it. 

 f Oct. 3 1 st. Being my birth-day, the nuns of St. Catherine's 

 sent me flowers of silk-work. We were very studious all 

 this winter till Christmas, when on twelfth day we invited 

 all the English and Scotts in towne to feast, which sunk our 

 excellent wine considerably. ' In explanation of this passage, 

 it needs to be said that he had soon again changed his lodg- 

 ing and gone to reside with three English friends * neere 

 St. Catherine's over against the monasterie of nunnes, where 

 we hired the whole house and lived very nobly. Here I 

 learned to play on ye theorbo, taught by Sig. Dominico 

 Bassano. ' 



After c the folly and madnesse of the Carnevall ' was over, 

 Evelyn left Venice for Padua in January, 1 646, but went 

 back in March to take leave of his friends there, and at 

 Easter set out on his return journey to England in company 

 with the poet Waller, who had been glad to go abroad after 

 being much worried by the Puritan party. They travelled 

 by way of Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Milan, the Lago Mag- 

 giore, the Simplon Pass, Sion, and St. Maurice to Geneva. 

 Here again Evelyn became sick nigh unto death, from 

 small-pox contracted at Beveretta, the night before reaching 

 Geneva. * Being extremely weary and complaining of my 

 head, and finding little accommodation in the house, I caus'd 

 one of our hostesses daughters to be removed out of her bed 

 and went immediately into it whilst it was yet warme, being 

 so heavy with pain and drowsinesse that I would not stay to 

 have the sheets chang'd ; but I shortly after payd dearly for 

 my impatience, falling sick of the small-pox so soon as I 

 came to Geneva, for by the smell of frankincense and ye tale 

 of ye good woman told me of her daughter having had an 

 ague, I afterwards concluded she had been newly recovered of 

 the small-pox.' Becoming very ill he was bled of the 



physican < a very learned old man He afterwards acknow- 



ledg'd that he should not have bled me had he suspected ye 



